KMS Tirpitz Steel Armor

Cut from the rusting hulk of the KMS Tirpitz, this block of steel armor is 320mm thick. It came from the band of side armor that protects Tirpitz’s vital areas, including her engine rooms, magazines, and turret machinery.

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With eight 15" guns, 12 6" guns, 30 AA guns of all calibers, and speed greater than 30 knots, Tirpitz, if she were ever to break out of the fjords and access the Atlantic with enough support units and aircraft, would have wrecked every convoy she came across. Churchill quite openly states that he wouldn’t send the Royal Navy to the Pacific in force until the German Kriegsmarine was eliminated as a serious threat.

This block of armor explains why it took several different attacks by Soviet and British submarines, surface vessels, aircraft, and finally, heavy bombers to sink her.

Many historians, and even some leading Nazis at the time, believe that it would have been better to decommission the battleship and release her crew to fight as infantry, rather than maintain Tirpitz as a floating target in the Norwegian fjords. Her presence, and potential of sailing for the open Atlantic at any moment, did figure into any Allied convoy operation for Murmansk, and her leaving port in October 1942 after convoy PQ-17 resulted in the convoy’s destruction, even if Tirpitz never took them under fire. When the convoy broke and ran, FW-200 Condor aircraft and especially U-boats picked the stragglers apart. Right-click and choose "view image" to enlarge.

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